Saturday, 20 December 2014

Another book in the FAQ series addresses one of our favourite subjects, science fiction movies. Considering we call ourselves the Sci Fi Freak Site, that shouldn't come as any great surprise to anyone.

Also not coming as a surprise to anyone will be the reservations we have over the title and subtitle. There are still no frequently asked questions in this book and we still don't know what they mean by 'all that's left to know about...', in this case time travel, alien, robot and out-of-this-world movies since 1970.

With this book, though, we also have larger reservations about the content than the previous entries we've tried (Doctor Who and Stephen King Films). It's not that it's hard to read; the writer's style is clean and easy to read and doesn't distract from the content at all. It's the construction that we don't understand.

Each film starts with a synopsis and then has some afterwords, analysis, box office and anecdotes. Nothing wrong with that, but it's the amount of room devoted to each that confuses. Take the entry for INCEPTION for example - the plot synopsis runs to seven pages whilst the rest runs to two. That seems to us to be entirely the wrong way around. Admittedly, INCEPTION is a film with a dense and twisting plot, but does anyone really need every twist and turn to be laid out for them? And that's the problem. If you've seen (and loved in most cases) the films then you'll know them well enough to not need to read a detailed synopsis of what happens. If you're going to see the film then you're not going to want to know all the twists and plot spoilers that are included. We found ourselves skipping the synopses altogether and reading only the 'afterwords'. Since these are the smaller sections and seemingly obsessed with box office receipts and not a lot else, the 380 page count gets a lot, lot less.

More interesting are the opening section on the literary roots of the genre (i.e. some important sci fi writers whose work has been recently adapted), science fiction movie spaceships and notable sci fi movie personages. Since these are not simply regurgitating plots, they have more interest.

It's hard to know who this book can be aimed that who won't be disappointed by it, and that's a big problem.

About Me

I am English, mid forties and a recent widower with two children and no time to, well pretty much anything these days.
More pertinently, I write and the fruits of these labours are available as ebooks on the likes of amazon, ibooks, smashwords and lulu.com
My main area of interest is science fiction and fantasy with a side order of supernatural horror. That's what I watch and read and write. I am a geek and proud of it. In fact, I also run a website called the Sci Fi Freak Site reviewing genre TV shows (it being pretty hard to get to the cinema any more).
I am also a regular contributor (some might say heckler) of the kindle forum on amazon.co.uk. It was there that it was suggested that every writer must have a blog, so here it is.
Blame them.